My thoughts exactly. I've seen three Sealed Stadium Events made public but this is actually my first look at a sealed F2. 

Sometimes when somebody values something so high, people won't even bother making a offer so they won't offend the seller or they probably think you won't budge. I think this is whats happening here.

People offered the original seller $15,000 without even seeing it. Where are they now? Maybe the grade isn't what they hoped. Maybe, as stated before, people only offered that much to spite the seller or stop the seller from selling it to you.

One question I would like to ask is, has the high-end sealed market disappeared? I could imagine it being only a handful of people and in this economy its really a bad mix.

As for the stadium events comparison. I could be totally off here and my whole post could be looked past upon since I'm no sealed collector but I believe Stadium Events is more of a harder find. I understand the statement made of there being six copies going around, which I'm not sure how accurate that is if you mean going around for sale or six copies known to exist, but it was a recalled item that had to be returned to the company. Flintstones 2 was only a rental exclusive and wasn't offered at retail. How much sealed games or games in general do we see going around being ex-rentals? Now consider the amount of rental stores in the United States in the 80's and 90's then assume half ordered a copy of F2 and how many had a going out of business sale.

I think if your copy sales for a good amount we will see plenty of copies pop up out of everywhere.

I would sell that thing in a heartbeat for $10,000. Sealed games = a plastic wrap. I will always think that way about them, lol

Stadium Events would have to be purchased at retail store before being recalled, then kept sealed for 2 decades. Certainly incredibly unlikely.

For a sealed F2, a rental store that makes their livelihood off of renting games, woud have to decide to not only buy F2, but decide to not open it, and then sell it at some point where it would remain sealed for a collective 2 decades.

How unlikely is that? Well, if you search for images of an example, you'll find mine followed by 0 others. I think you really underestimate the rarity of this game.

edit: in response to ZOMG

If you aren't really in need of the cash right now, you could leave it listed for several months just to show people that yours is the only one out there. The people that perpetually watch eBay will start to notice that it's the only one that shows up in searches for months and months.

Umm no?    where are you getting that from?   There were a number of fake auctions on ebay but if we're talking actual legit copies there is

SE

my copy

phishors

41k copy

F2

your copy

"another" copy

and for your information the person "rumoured" to have a case of SEs also is "rumored" to have cases of F2.

Carts = hard plastic shell

yeah guys, if this is gonna come down to a dialog of which is rarer, stadium events, or flintstones 2, im gonna have to tell everybody to just reserve their judgement, because both are very extreme situations. up until recently, we didnt even know whether f2 came sealed to begin with, did we? i guess numbers were also unknown, and while now we may have a somewhat general idea of how many stadium events made it out into the wild, both cases are still very, very similar.

when we get down the road ten years, fifteen years, and the value of these games is even higher, im pretty certain that we will be seeing a few more stadium events, where the rarity of f2 in sealed form isnt going to pop up. i totally think that cart is a once in a lifetime thing, but the world is a dang big place, and who knows, all it takes is one sleeve of these found to suss all our opinions out. whether that was the case, i doubt it would happen due to the distribution of the game.

i would probably assume that because of how it was put out there and judging by the number of blockbusters at the time, that it was probably a release of 2500, 3000, or 5000 copies. its hard to really make any sort of educated guess of these numbers, but my basing of that opinion has to do with the way i have seen production runs of things happen in whats considered independant media over the years, as well as where blockbuster was at that point. but theres no telling if they didnt make more than that due to it being the flintstones, and it got spread even more thin then we expected. i dont even remember seeing this title at blockbuster back in the day.

so the odds of them going out on the shelves, or some employee stealing a copy of it because 'its just one copy', opening it and playing it, those things factor in. what blockbuster employees were told and how to handle the game has a lot to do with it. theres certainly so many factors that are unique in both this game and se, but both had very different circumstances that to say we would ever see too many se's sealed, and the number of f2's would be exponentially less i'd think due to the circumstances.

I guess I'm underestimating the rarity just a tad bit. It's just that I've been to three or so old rental stores this year where I found a handful of sealed games that I didnt buy because the owners asked for too much from my little wallet. Im pretty much saying that those unsealed games had the same chance of going unopened than a F2.

Its hard for me to consider a game rare when it was distributed very openly to rental stores across the whole country instead of being released and being DEMANDED to return them like SE. It's hard for me to consider it rare, as stated above, but it's still fucking rare now despite my ideology and senseless rambling. I mean, I'm glad this game came into the hands of the NA community and hopefully it gets passed down to a collector. I just don't get how this is still for sale.

And what's this about a rumored case of SEs and F2s?

I take back what I said about not thinking F2 was rare. I didn't know it was a blockbuster exclusive. I thought it was a rental store exclusive so any rental store could order it. Given the fact that there was probably a million or more blockbusters in the early 90s, I can't imagine a blockbuster not opening a game. Unless employees got the option of buying a copy from the store as try ordered them but still, it's very hard to predict how cool a manager was. SE and f2 are both rare in their own rights.

the misinformation level on this thread is approaching epic proportions

Enough people need to know and care that a game exists for it to become a serious grail. Games of true obscurity aren't worth jack. Go try finding the PC retail boxed North American release of Sonic Adventure DX for sale. Back yet with no luck? Thought so.

Not so much. The difference between a box, manual, and cart as opposed to "shrinkwrap" is very different. You aren't getting anything viable from it as opposed to cart/box/manual collectors.

I respect those that collect sealed games, but in all honestly, I'm not "trivializing" anything, it's a seal that guarantees mint contents, I get that, but the value is in the seal and the wrap. If you remove the wrap the value degrades immensely, so I never thought to collect sealed games since I am more of a librarian type and need to have access to these games, that is why I gladly trade down so I can play these things or get to the manuals if need be.

I think it's great I can get to play a game just for trading it and get some cash to put for a boxed copy, lol..I'll do that all day

Now about this 50K thing....it has a best offer, I don't see what all the fuss is about....

it's more of a matter of it being rare in that form, like i said, we werent even certain that it came sealed to blockbuster at all. really, it doesnt make any sense if they werent for commercial sale that they even would have sealed it, due to the expense of running the machine among other things. i think due to what each store would have gotten in stock, that each store would have probably got maybe two, three copies? if even that. if you can get an idea of how many blockbusters there were in 1994, you can get a general idea give or take if you assume each store got that many.

maybe it was the kind of things that blockbusters placed an order and the game was made custom stock plus a little bit of extra for damaged copies if blockbusters needed to replace them, probably not a high number at all. but whether or not some of them were stowed away, you know, or whether all the stores shifted them to smaller stores as overstock that never got out to the shelves due to space, theres no way to tell that. if some 'extra copies' were made like i said, it would make sense that they're still be around, unless, like with stadium events, that maybe they destroyed them? but maybe not? theres so many different things involved there.

thats the only reason i throw that idea of how many stores there were out there. coulda been the same type of thing with stadium events where there was a total recall of them too after they phased out nes stuff for rent there, you gotta keep in mind that 1994 when it came out was the end of the whole cycle for the most part. looks like the wikipedia has two different dates, one in feb for europe and one in august for north america. if im not mistaken, the titles that came after that woulda been yoshis cookie coming out right before it, then warios woods in december. that was the last title. so effectively f2 is an end of an era and the price of warios woods should be a lil more consistent with stuff like snow bros.

maybe they were doing that as an attempt to breathe a lil bit more life into the system, because they knew it was the end. a different way of doing thangz was always taitos motto, and their games were great for it. theres just a ton of different things, and thats the beauty of it, its definately a wonderful event that the bros were able to get it, and for all their diligence to this hobby hopefully they can find a good home for it, i think they will before too long.

ok imma shut up, lotta maybes there hehe. i wont say anything else but maybe some of you guys agree with some of the points i brought up.

Atwood says a lot of stuff, or rather, said a lot of stuff.  Haven't seen him pop up in any community for years.

When we're talking about misinformation, it often can occurs from these cryptic posts.  Right now the "confirmed copies" beyond mine are:

"another" copy

Atwood's case


Out for public observation and  available as tangible data for the whole community to see, that puts the rarity 3:1 in F2's favor when it's sealed.  Not saying those other copies don't exist, but you'll have a hard time convincing people that it's any less rare if those are your only other data points.


On another note, I've received 2 strong offers on this.  If you ever wanted to buy this game, it's getting awfully close to a time where that pretty much won't be possible.  I'd consider getting offers in sooner rather than later.

You do realize that this is absolutely going to sell for thousands of dollars, right?  Kinda makes you point moot.

Appreciate it Mark, but I am not interested in this copy at this time.   Wish you the best of luck with your sale and will be interested in hearing what the offers were.

This whole thing about doubting or at least discounting the other copy/copies is getting old.   I feel like why am I even sharing anything, cryptic or not, if its going to be argued at every turn.     I am setting out neutral facts.   I have told you that I have seen the "other" copy with my own eyes.   Somehow that's not good enough now?   I understand that as the seller of this game you have a vested interest, but come on.   

I don't lie.    The fact that the other copy is not available for public consumption is because I have my reasons.    Can we stop chasing our tail here?        You're in a good position on it because you the only one selling one right now.   But let's not confuse that with it being the only copy around.

Either way, your game is going to sell for $X.    There being another copy or other copies that are not available for sale isn't going to change the selling price of yours.   I don't lie, and have no reason to lie.   So why the doubt?  Perhaps you thought I was interested in this copy and was trying to talk it down?   Neither is true, as I said I am sharing neutral facts and if you don't care to believe them, well, I will still sleep OK tonight and your discounting them won't make the facts any less true.

As for misinformation I was referring, among other things, to the sudden gospel that this was a blockbuster exclusive.    I've never seen any kind of confirmation of anything like that and where the other copy was found pretty much discounts that theory entirely.    I assume the beavis' copy was also not from blockbuster, have you asked the seller?

never said A's copies (and I think you're missing the "s" on the end of "case") were confirmed.   I haven't seen pictures of those.

I should have been MUCH clearer, but my last comment was directed to the community at large, I never thought you expressed any interest in this game.  If any of the other members who had expressed interest in purchasing this game to me previously, time is short.

I don't doubt, but you speak of misinformation in this thread without providing much on the contrary.  Atwood has cases of F2's like Hounder has two SE boxes.  Pics or GTFO.  I mean seriously, it really seems like tossing the Atwood thing out there now when most people have dismissed his SE case for years is a pretty feeble attempt at downplaying the rarity of this game.

Mine is the only copy that the community at large can confirm exist, that's strictly the point I was making.  Word of mouth is word of mouth, regardless of how reputable the source is.  It's absolutely going to be perceived differently than pictures of the game sealed.

Just one quick question:
Did you ever have interest in this copy, and did you ever contact the original seller with an offer?

If you look back, I don't think I ever referenced Blockbuster, just a rental exclusive.

As for where the original seller received this copy and the other sealed games, yes, they were from a rental store.

I sense a shit ton of penis envy in here. Is it the only copy? Maybe, maybe not. Who cares? Is it the only sealed one available? Right now, yes. It's really sad that so much arguing and nay saying is going on in here. We're a community - be happy for the owners of this, yeesh.

The SE you cite in your auction never got paid for (the seller contacted me). I'm sure it sold for a lot to someone, but that particular auction never got paid for.

I can't edit because I have a pending offer.  If that offer doesn't pan out, I'll edit the listing, though I have another offer through EBay messaging that I may end up working with and still won't be able to update.

Good luck on the sale guys! Hopefully you'll get some decent offers for it.

I am sure there are very few of these out there due to being a rental exclusive. The only sealed copies are either left over stock at the factories or copies that were purchased by rental stores and somehow survived not being opened all these years.